Defense Exhibit 3A

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Wishing to give her (Antoinette) children yet another lesson of beneficence (generosity) [during the long and severe winter of

1783-84], she desired me on New Years eve to (buy) from Paris, as in other years, all the fashionable playthings, and have them spread out in her closet. Then taking her children by the hand, she showed them all the dolls and mechanical toys which were ranged there, and told them that she had intended to give them some handsome (great) New Years gifts, but that the cold made the poor so wretched that all her money was spent in blankets and clothes to protect them from the rigour (harshness) of the season, and in supplying them with bread; so that this year they would only have the pleasure of looking at the new playthings. When she returned with her children into her sitting-room, she said there was still an unavoidable expense to be incurred; that assuredly many mothers would at that season think as she did, that the toyman must lose by it; (referring to Marie not buying the toys from the toy maker) and therefore she gave him fifty Louis to repay him for the cost of his journey, and console him for having sold nothing.